Enoch Arden

Enoch Arden, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D. C. L., Poet-Laureate. Boston : Ticknor & Fields.

IN his new volume Tennyson has thrown out some verses, graceful, defiant, triumphant, and yet a little touched with sadness, in which he assails the thieves who have stolen his seed of poetry, and made the flower so common that the people call it as, indeed, they did when first it blossomed — a weed. It may be for the reason here indicated that he has chosen for his later poems a form —that of the Idyl — the versification, construction, and use of which he has made his own by a delicate and yet indisputable stamp of sovereignty : whatever may be the reason, let us be thankful for the choice. He has worked in no field of whose resources he was more completely master, or which has yielded him more full and varied development of his rare genius. The work of his riper years, with the results of his fidelity in discipline, his generous culture, his catholic and earnest intercourse with men, and his clear and thoughtful observation lying ready for his use, he has crowned the green glory of his past with a chaplet that will grow more sure of permanence with the scrutiny of every succeeding year. In his “ Idyls of the King ” we recognized the best moral qualities of many of his previous works ; and in “Enoch Arden,” which gives the title to his last volume, he has turned the full light of his perfected genius on the simple scenes of domestic joy and sorrow.

We have always deemed it one of the greatest of Tennyson’s great and good qualities, that he is unfaltering in the tribute of honor which he pays to the sterling virtues and to the beauty and heroism which he rejoices to point us to in the daily walk of the humblest life. A blameless character, pure desire, manly ambition, a fervent faith, and a strong will, resting on the firm innermost foundation of a Christian spirit, are as real to him in the fisherman as in the peerless prince. The temptations, the strength, and the temper of the hero are so common to both, and so clearly brought out in each, that we feel the Man in the Prince, and the high aim of the Prince in the true Man. There is the “ grand, heroic soul ” in Enoch as in Arthur, —

Our poet never strays from Nature, which has for him two sides, — the old duality, which is also forever, — the real and the ideal. To the one he brings the most patient fidelity of study; the other he reflects in every part of his poems in glowing imagery. “ Enoch Arden ” contains scenes which a Pre-Raphaelite might draw from, — as that “cup-like hollow in the down” which held the hazel-wood, with the children nutting through its reluctant boughs, or the fireside of Philip, on which Enoch looked and was desolate. On the other hand, no poet has so planted our literature with gorgeous gardens from which generations of lesser laborers will be enriched and prospered. The figures in which Tennyson uses Nature are not, moreover, strained or artificial; they do not distort or cover the inner meaning, but bloom from it, revealing its beauty and its sweetness. All bear the mark of loving thought, — now so delicate that its very faintness thrills and holds us, now strong and spirited and solemn.

In this latest poem we find also the old surpassing skill of language, a skill dependent on the faculty of penetrating to the inmost significance both of words and of things, so that there is no waste, and so that single words in single sentences stamp on the brain the substance of long experiences. Witness this: Enoch lies sick, distant from home and wife and children ; here is one word crowded with pathos, telling of the weary loss of livelihood, the burden slowly growing more intolerably irksome to the bold and careful worker wrestling with pain, and to the fragile mother of the new-born babe : —

See, again, how one line woven in the
context shows where the tears came.
Enoch, wrecked, solitary, almost hopeless,
found that

We know of no more perfect rendering of an unlearned and trustful faith in God than this which Tennyson puts in the mouth of Enoch as he departs on the voyage from which he never returns to his wife : —

In the repetition in the last line one can almost hear the sob welling up from the heart of the strong sailor, as he speaks of God to one beloved, in time of trial,— the feeling of bitterness in parting starting with the impulse of the stronger faith.

In “ Enoch Arden,” as in “In Memoriam,” Tennyson shows the sweet and sure sympathy which informs him of all the ways of grief. In its sacred experiences, where the slightest variance from the simplicity of actual feeling would jostle all, he holds his way unquestioned.

It is a test, unembarrassed and complete, of genius, this treatment of grief, the emotion which least of all brooks exaggeration or sentimentalism. It is the test of human purity, too, and the hand must be very tender and very clean which leaves thus exact and clear the picture of the crowning phase of human life. If “ In Memoriam ” has appropriated to itself, by its sublime supremacy, a phrase which, though in daily use, is never heard without suggesting the poem, Tennyson shows in “Enoch Arden ” that he understands the sad and perfect reign of grief in the life of the sailor and of the sailor’s wife struck with a great sorrow for the loss of the latest born, as well as in the broad and varied range of his own cultured nature.

Coupled with the knowledge of grief is this of prayer, — “that mystery when God in man is one with man-in-God,”— which is said when Enoch had resolved to surrender his Annie rather than to break in upon her happiness : —

And so we close the poem, which touches us again more than we deemed possible, till each renewal of the reading stirs again the depths of passionate sympathy. A pure manhood among the poets, a heart simple as the simplest, an imperial fancy, whose lofty supremacy none can question, a high faith, and a spirit possessed with the sublimest and most universal of Christ’s truths, a tender and strong humanity, not bounded by a vague and misty sentiment, but pervading life in all its forms, and with these great skill and patience and beauty in expression,—these are the riper qualities to which “ Enoch Arden” testifies. They are qualities whose attainment and retention are singularly rare, and whose value we cannot easily overrate.

And thus much having been said of “ Enoch Arden,” we find no space for consideration of the other poems contained in the new volume. “Aylmer’s Field” is in some respects, perhaps, more remarkable than the poem which precedes it, since the poet never loses sight of England, in its course, nor the old familiar scenes, but tugs at the fetid roots of shallow aristocracy with the relentless clutch of one of God’s noblemen laboring for the right.

Shut in these few pages we find the substance of a three-volume novel; and while the mind sways slowly to the music of its “sculptured lines,” the lives of men move on from birth to death, leaving their meaning stamped in rhythmic beauty on our heart and brain.

Nor must we forget, while contemplating the two principal poems in the volume, —finished heroic lessons of the poet’s mature life,— the songs, singing themselves like summer ripples on the strand, which are their melodious companions. Among them we dare to mention “In the Valley of Cauteretz,” —

“ Sweeter thy voice, though every sound is: sweet.”